7/4 Harvest - Red, White... and Orange!

We pulled a few carrots this weekend to see how they were sizing up.  I sowed these carrot seeds in early April, so theoretically they should have had enough time to reach full size after three months, but root crops always seem to take longer to size up in our garden.  These carrots were still too small, but I'm hopeful that the carrots will grow much bigger and better in our new garden this year compared to our pitiful carrots from last year.

This year, in addition to the same carrots from last year (Short 'n Sweet variety), we're growing a Kaleidoscope Mix of Imperator carrots.  After a quick taste test, we decided that the colorful carrots don't taste much better than "normal" carrots, but the variety of colors is always fun, and one of the advantages of growing vegetables at home is being able to grow things that you can't normally get from the grocery store.

This is over seven pounds of turnip.  The turnips ranged in size from toothpick (the ones that didn't size up for whatever reason) to racquetball (slightly smaller than a tennis ball).  Keith has a theory that whatever he does not want to eat from the garden, like turnip, grows really well effortlessly, and whatever he does like to eat takes a lot of effort to grow.  So far, it seems to be true!  He has a coworker who actually likes turnips, including green tops, so he will be the lucky recipient of 7 pounds of organic homegrown turnip, complete with flea beetle holes on the leaves, on Tuesday.

This was our last head of spring-planted China Choy.  We really enjoyed our asian greens this spring.  I direct sowed a few more seeds in the garden to see if they would grow at all over the summer, but I'm not holding my breath.  I'll probably do a large fall planting and hope that they survive the cabbage worm attack.  Those nasty green worms seem to be much more active in the fall than in the spring.

Sugar snap peas and Mammoth Melting Snow peas.  I was surprised that the pea vines were still producing, but as long as we get a couple of servings of fresh peas a week, I'm a happy gardener.

Here is our first green bean harvest of the year - golden wax bean and some other variety whose name escapes me right now.  Just a handful this week, but I'm hoping that the yield improves as the weeks go by.  The beans aren't looking very healthy at the moment in the garden.  They had a rough start this year with something eating holes in their leaves.  Then they recovered and grew a few more healthy green leaves, but now many of the plants have yellow or lime-green leaves.  I'm not sure what's ailing them so early in the season.

A bit of dill and parsley to mix in with our salad.  We love the flavor of a variety of fresh herbs mixed in salad.  Well, I love it, Keith probably just tolerates it.

I harvested ten bulbs of garlic, which is about half of our garlic.  I braided the green tops and let them hang to dry in the garage, because we don't have a shed or a basement.  Keith walked in there today and said it smelled like the garage had bad garlic breath. 

Happy Fourth of July and Harvest Monday!

• Asian Greens 5.55 oz
• Green Onions 5.20 oz 
• Garlic 1.30 oz  (one bulb of fresh garlic; remaining harvest will be weighed after curing)
• Peas 8.60 oz 
• Carrots 1.75 oz
• Turnips 113.50 oz
• Green beans 2.80 oz
• Herbs 1.10 oz
• Weekly Total 139.80 oz, or 8.73 lbs
• 2011 Total 23.44 lbs